EE Program Objectives
The main objective of the electrical engineering program is to prepare its students for either graduate study or research and development work in government or industrial laboratories. This objective is consistent with the institutional mission since 1921: “To train the creative type of scientist or engineer urgently needed in our educational, governmental, and industrial development.'' It accomplishes this by building on the core curriculum to provide a broad and rigorous exposure to the fundamentals (e.g., math, science and engineering) of electrical engineering. EE's other program educational objectives are multiple. The program strives to maintain a balance between classroom lectures and laboratory and design experience, and emphasizes the problem formulation, system design and solving skills that are essential to any engineering discipline. The program also strives to develop in each student self-reliance, creativity, team work ability, professional ethics, communication skills, and an appreciation of the importance of contemporary issues and life-long intellectual growth.

Electrical Engineering at Caltech emphasizes both electronics and systems. Closely allied with Computation and Neural Systems, Applied Physics, Computer Science, and Control and Dynamical Systems, it offers students the opportunity for study and research, both theoretical and experimental, in a wide variety of subjects, including wireless systems, quantum electronics, modern optics, lasers and guided waves, solid-state materials and devices, power electronics, control theory, learning systems, computational finance, signal processing, data compression, communications, parallel and distributed computing, fault-tolerant computing, and computational vision.

Substantial experimental laboratory facilities, housed mainly in the Moore Laboratory of Engineering (shown above), are associated with each of these research fields.